Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Paria Fu­el’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq Mo­hammed says the com­pa­ny took the rec­om­men­da­tions of the T&T Coast Guard and four div­ing com­pa­nies that it was un­safe to res­cue the four LM­CS divers trapped in a pipeline at the com­pa­ny’s off­shore fa­cil­i­ty in Pointe-a-Pierre on Feb­ru­ary 25.

How­ev­er, two of the com­pa­nies he named say they were nev­er asked to res­cue the men and a third says they on­ly made a de­ci­sion not to at­tempt the res­cue the next day.

This was re­vealed in state­ments made to the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) set up to in­ves­ti­gate the ac­ci­dent that led to the deaths of Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry.

In Mo­hammed’s state­ment to the CoE, he said around 8.40 pm on Feb­ru­ary 25, the first day of the in­ci­dent, he asked Paria’s in­ci­dent team com­man­der, Collin Piper, to get the T&T Coast Guard to “sup­port the res­cue ef­forts.”

“Be­tween 2238 hours and mid­night Fri­day night (Feb­ru­ary 25), Collin re­port­ed to me that the TTCG did their ini­tial as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion and con­clud­ed that it was too risky to dive in­to the pipeline. He al­so re­port­ed that an­oth­er dive com­pa­ny which re­viewed the da­ta col­lect­ed, in­di­cat­ed that it was too risky to send their divers in­to the pipeline and that they would not do so,” Mo­hammed said.

He said by mid­night, there were spe­cial­ist div­ing com­pa­nies on site, pro­vid­ing feed­back and ad­vice.

Mo­hammed then list­ed Hull Sup­port Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (HSSL), Off­shore Tech­nol­o­gy So­lu­tions Lim­it­ed (OT­SL), Mitchell’s Pro­fes­sion­al Div­ing Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MPDSL) and East­ern Emer­gency Re­sponse Ser­vices (EERS).

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all of these com­pa­nies, ex­cept for MPDSL, al­so pro­vid­ed state­ments to the com­mis­sion and some of them con­tra­dict Mo­hammed’s tes­ti­mo­ny.

OT­SL ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor An­to­nio Don­awa said he was con­tact­ed by Paria’s tech­ni­cal and main­te­nance man­ag­er, Michael Wei on the night of Feb­ru­ary 25.

Don­awa said Wei called him and put the call on speak­er phone so the in­ci­dent com­mand team (ICT) could hear his (Don­awa’s) re­spons­es.

“They asked me what could have hap­pened to the divers and I be­lieved what I said was that they en­coun­tered a Delta P in­ci­dent.

“They did not ap­pear to un­der­stand what a Delta P in­ci­dent was, so I ex­plained it and, in fact, af­ter my ex­pla­na­tion, I sent a video to Michael Wei show­ing a crab be­ing sucked in­to a pipeline be­cause of a Delta P in­ci­dent and an­oth­er giv­ing a de­tailed sci­en­tif­ic ex­pla­na­tion,” Don­awa tes­ti­fied.

He said the con­ver­sa­tion last­ed about 10 to 15 min­utes, dur­ing which time he ex­plained the pres­sure per square inch (psi) that the pipeline would be un­der.

Don­awa said af­ter that, he told Wei to call him if he need­ed any more in­for­ma­tion. But Don­awa said he did not speak to any­one from Paria un­til sev­er­al days lat­er.

“A few days lat­er, be­fore the re­trieval of the bod­ies, I was asked by OT­SL’s CEO, Mr Bertrand, to join a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion he was hav­ing with Her­itage. I did join, al­though I do not re­call the ex­act date. It was me, Mr Bertrand and Mr OC Flem­ing (Her­itage HSE’s Lead) and sev­er­al oth­ers whose names I do not re­call. The pur­pose of the call was to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of do­ing a pen­e­tra­tion dive in­to the pipeline to search for sur­vivors,” Don­awa said.

He said at that time, he ad­vised safe­ty would be an is­sue, as there was no way of telling whether the pres­sure in the lines had been equalised.

In his sworn state­ment, Gyasi Wood­ley, the op­er­a­tions man­ag­er at Hull Sup­port Ser­vices, said he was first con­tact­ed about the ac­ci­dent around 4.30 pm on Feb­ru­ary 25.

Wood­ley said Her­itage’s ma­rine lead, Andy For­tune, asked him whether Hull could pro­vide emer­gency sub­sea ser­vices.

“I did call Andy back at about 5.30 pm and told him that most of the fel­lows had left for the day and oth­ers had fam­i­ly arrange­ments, but I will keep try­ing. He told me he would call me back to give me more in­for­ma­tion,” Wood­ley said.

He said he lat­er learnt that an­oth­er Her­itage em­ploy­ee, Rolph Seales, had con­tact­ed Hull’s div­ing man­ag­er, An­tho­ny Nivet, to re­quest the pro­vi­sion of a de­com­pres­sion cham­ber.

Wood­ley said the cham­ber was op­er­a­tionalised “even though it was not need­ed by Paria.”

The next day, Wood­ley said he had more dis­cus­sions with Seales about treat­ing the ac­ci­dent’s lone sur­vivor, Christo­pher Boodram, in the de­com­pres­sion cham­ber. But he said be­cause Boodram was al­leged to have had COVID-19 at that time, the treat­ment was can­celled.

Wood­ley al­so re­mem­bers speak­ing to an­oth­er of­fi­cial about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of cut­ting the pipeline.

“On be­half of Hull, I did ad­vise that cut­ting the hor­i­zon­tal sec­tion of the line was risky,” Wood­ley said.

He said he had no con­tact with any­one from Paria or Her­itage on Feb­ru­ary 27. He said on Feb­ru­ary 28, he was told by For­tune that the ICT did not want any­one to go in­to the pipeline.

“Andy did not re­quest as­sis­tance from Hull in re­la­tion to any res­cue,” Wood­ley said.

Andy John­son, the chief of op­er­a­tions of East­ern Emer­gency Re­sponse Ser­vices (EERS), al­so pro­vid­ed a state­ment to the com­mis­sion.

He said his team ar­rived at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty at 12.30 am on Feb­ru­ary 26. There, they met with the in­ci­dent com­man­der at 1.25 am.

John­son said he could not re­mem­ber that per­son’s name but ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by Paria, Collin Piper had been act­ing in that role.

John­son said Piper ad­vised him that Paria may want to en­gage EERS for a res­cue.

“He al­so ad­vised that due to the vari­ables around the in­ci­dent, we should pre­pare our­selves for a re­trieval and not a res­cue due to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the divers may have ex­pired,” John­son said.

He said he told Piper he would need to go to the site to do a vi­su­al and dy­nam­ic risk as­sess­ment.

Sev­er­al hours lat­er at 3.45 am, John­son said he had com­plet­ed his as­sess­ment and met with Piper again.

“I in­formed him that due to the video footage viewed from the ROV (Re­mote Op­er­at­ed Ve­hi­cle), there was no way my team would be able to make en­try to per­form the res­cue op­er­a­tion as ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120 feet of the 1,200-foot pipeline was filled with wa­ter. I told the In­ci­dent Com­man­der that be­cause of the wa­ter, the res­cue re­quired a div­ing team,” John­son said.

He said at 5 am, his team was placed on stand-by off-site. They re­mained there for the next 12 hours.

“At ap­prox­i­mate­ly 19:00hrs (7 pm), we were called off the as­sign­ment by the In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team,” John­son said.